A prisoner had escaped. The commandant announced that 10 men would die. He relished walking along the ranks. “This one. That one.” As they were being marched away to the starvation bunkers, Number 16670 dared to step from the line. “I would like to take that man’s place. He has a wife and children.”
“Who are you?”
“A priest.” No name, no mention of fame.
Silence.
The commandant, dumbfounded, perhaps with a fleeting thought of history, kicked Sergeant Francis Gajowniczek out of the death line and ordered the priest, Father Kolbe, to go instead with the nine.
In the “block of death” they were ordered to strip naked, and their slow starvation began in darkness. But there was no screaming—the prisoners sang.
By the eve of the Assumption (August 14, 1941) four were left alive. The jailer came to finish Kolbe off as he sat in a corner praying. He lifted his fleshless arm to receive the bite of the hypodermic needle. It was filled with carbolic acid. They burned his body with all the others.
He was beatified in 1971 and canonized in 1982.
Who was this priest? Maximilian Kolbe was born in Poland, became a Conventual Franciscan, founded the Militia of the Immaculate Mary which consisted of thousands of men dedicated to the Virgin Mary, published the Knights of the Immaculata newspaper that was read by thousands, established a chapter of this order in Japan, and was a widely respected writer and preacher in Europe.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe's feast day is the date of his martyrdom, August 14.
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